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Have Six Pack Will Succeed at love. Or, so we think.

It’s an unfortunate habit of a great many folks who put themselves into the online dating market that they are somewhat disingenuous about their looks. Whether it’s their hair length, how much they have left of said hair, how old they really are and in particular, their relative girths, it’s a mine field.

This past January I got summarily dumped yet again by a man who’s made a sport of it the last decade, just as I have made a sport of my own stupidity by accepting him back when things don’t work out elsewhere for him. If we didn’t do dumb shit like this comedians would have no material at all, and life would be so predictable and boring. I’d have nobody to laugh at, since I am my best and biggest target (albeit biggest is a relative term here). I refer to mine ego, thanks, not my body, at least not for the last three decades.

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The BF and I are both lifelong bodybuilders so we kinda like a type.

In the interim (the BF is in Phoenix, where he says he despises hot weather, getting it on with a new love. Um, for now. Stay tuned.) and I am in Bali, enjoying relative Paradise where I am getting online. If for no other reason than the sport of it, and to gather fodder for articles like this one. I rejoined Fitness Singles, which purports to be for those of us who live a healthy lifestyle, and Zoosk, which seems to be the wholesale hidey-hole for supremely pissed off old men with an axe to grind about active older women who prefer younger men.

But I’m ahead of myself.

So after about a day on Fitness Singles, which bills itself as the largest of its kind for uber healthy folks (there aren’t many members, what does that tell you?) I spotted an ad for LOSE WEIGHT FAST.

Which of course brings up the question, why is this ad on Fitness Singles, which, I would surmise — safely — is for us (at least somewhat) fit folk?

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Clearly the folks selling their weight loss (machine, product, pill, liposuction, exercise program, powder, hypnotism) are clued in to what the rest of us already know. What you see is often not what you get.

While it goes against any kind of common sense that any of us would post a shot of ourselves (or for that matter, someone else’s) in action or in repose and then show up one hundred pounds heavier (as one of my new online buddies told me yesterday), people do it with such regularity that nowadays, I get remarkably snide comments on my photos. People assume I’m lying. What a world we live in. Folks are terrified to be who they are, and they often assume that I’m not, either.

A woman here on Medium dunned me last night for putting up an old photo. Interestingly, it’s not. It’s what I look like when a professional makeup artist and photographer do their thing. I’d LOVE to look like that all the time, but with my lifestyle, that’s a pipe dream. I’m usually sweaty, dirty and covered with horse hair. Doesn’t make for a good profile photo.

Here’s part of what bothers me. There is an assumption (which is patently unfair) that EVERYBODY wants some slim chick or some muscled guy. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. The fact is that human preferences run the gamut from preferring a guy with a tummy (as does my buddy Sonja) to rounder and with curves ( as many men do) to those of us who are muscle heads, which frankly, plenty of folks do not find the least bit attractive. Therein lies the problem. The notion that any one particular body type is what we should all aspire to is ridiculous and it gets in the way of meeting people. Whatever you are right now is FINE. The people who find you attractive will find you. But you and I will chase away a good prospect if we’re dishonest.

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Besides the other problem is this: if there were a product that could remove 50 or more pounds between the initial flirt (that promises 170 of lean and mean) and the first date (which shows up at 220 of it’s-just-my hormones), my guess is that said product would have swept the nation by this point. Oprah would have tossed aside her Weight Watchers contract and filled her tiny wagon with the rest of what she lost. We’d all be slim and lean. And it would be boring.

Rather than worry about that, why can’t we just put ourselves out there as we are and not have that awful anxiety of knowing that someone might be surprised, and not necessarily in a good way? Look- you are what and you are. Be that. If you’re 220, then be 220, no excuses. My god, how refreshing.

Then there’s this: the guy on Fitness Singles who viewed me yesterday, had a body that Michelangelo himself would have substituted for David, but his head was chopped off in every shot.

So when I queried him about this, he penned back that he was still married.

Now that IS ten pounds of ugly fat.

Right on top of his shoulders.

How much does the human head actually weigh?
You Asked: How much does the human head actually weigh? --- Cindy, Ashville, NC Marshall Brain Answered: The human head…

Ultimately it’s not about the weight. It’s about the weight of our honesty. If we’re not single, we don’t belong on a singles site (what a concept). If we put up a photo, that’s who should show up for the first coffee. It is far more refreshing to get the real deal who is unabashedly authentic — tall, small, round, thin, honestly who cares — -than the shock of someone else entirely.